Green Earth Africa

New partner Soleco supports Jérôme D’Ambrosio

Based in Opglabbeek, Soleco is an environmental company that transforms sunshine into electricity through photovoltaic systems such as solar panels and inverters. Soleco pledged their support to Jérôme after he, along with other drivers from the Gravity Sport Management stable, made a personal commitment to offset the carbon footprint associated with his Formula One racing career.

The new partnership will see the Soleco logo appearing on Jérôme’s racesuit and helmet, as well as on the Marussia Virgin Racing MVR-02 race car, for the balance of the 2011 season.

Andy Webb, CEO, Marussia Virgin Racing
“We are delighted to welcome Soleco to Marussia Virgin Racing and congratulations to Jérôme. He has acquitted himself well in his debut year of Formula One racing and it is very positive for him to have attracted the attentions of an emerging Belgian company.”

Bob Geekens, CEO, Soleco
“After many years, finally there is a Belgian driver back in Formula One and Soleco is pleased to be the first Belgian company to support Jérôme on his journey. To underpin its international activities, Soleco Green Energy has found a perfect ambassador in Jérôme and the Marussia Virgin Racing team. This partnership will help us to develop our international ambitions and Soleco will benefit from excellent strategic marketing opportunities. Jérôme is committed to offsetting his carbon emissions. To do so, Soleco will compensate his carbon footprint by investing in renewable energy projects and donating some of the returns to charity and the development of carbon neutral projects and products.”

Lusaka-based Zambikes are building bikes in Zambia for sale around the world through California-based Zambikes International.

After writing about two different bamboo bicycle projects in Africa in the past few years, we recently came across further evidence that the concept is catching on. Zambia is the focus this time, however, thanks toZambikes, which builds bikes in that country for sale around the world.

Unemployment is more than 50 percent in Zambia, and literacy is low. For the past three years, Lusaka-based Zambikes has been serving the Zambian community with “quality, life-changing transportation products and healthy training and development for their employees,” in the organization’s own words. Now, through California-based Zambikes International, Zambikes’ products are being offered for sale around the globe. The line of bamboo bicycles is available for worldwide delivery through Zambikes International’s online store — a complete single-speed bike costs USD 1,250 — with sales reps and demonstration outlets in six locations across the United States as well as a dealer in Capetown, South Africa. Also available from Zambikes are a cargo bike and a “Zambulance,” or bicycle ambulance trailer.

Zambikes Bamboo Frames Commercial from Russell Brownley on Vimeo.

It’s one thing to donate resources and supplies to the needy in developing nations, but setting up a full-fledged global industry there gives citizens a self-sustaining future. Socially minded entrepreneurs: one to sponsor or partner with!

Website: www.zambikes.com

Contact: info@zambikesint.com

Tidal energy could provide a quarter of the UK’s electricity, but renewable experts are lukewarm because they are overestimating the cost

Underwater 10 megawatt tidal stream project in the Sound of Islay between the Hebridean islands of Islay and Jura. Photograph: ScottishPower Renewables

Ten years after the publication of the World Commission on Dams report, the West and Central Africa office of IUCN commissioned a study to look at the approaches to decision-making around large dams.

Image type barrage

Photo: CCRE-UICN

In close collaboration with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the report informs the current regional Consultation on Large Infrastructures Projects in the Water Sector in the ECOWAS Zone. More information on the Dialogue régional sur les grandes infrastructures hydrauliques can be found here.

The purpose of the study has been to review the diversity of decision-making around environmental and social aspects concerning the development of large dams in both developing countries and in emerging economies. Case studies were carried out of the Lom Pangar Hydropower Project in Cameroon, and of the Water Charter of the Senegal River (la Charte des Eaux du Fleuve Sénégal).

The report proposes a simple framework of analysis for different levels of practice, and emphasises the importance of extending the traditional core commercial and financial transactions relating to finance for large infrastructure. Extending this framework to include the environmental and social aspects as project components embeds social and environmental aspects at the core of the financial decision making, rather than these critical elements appearing as bolt-on additions to a robust financial transaction process.

In preparing the report, perspectives of key informants representing a range of interests were gathered, including review of five policies at international level (the World Bank’s Safeguard Policies, the IFC Performance Standards, the ‘Equator Principles’, the ‘Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol’ and the report of the World Commission on Dams).

The report states: ‘Review of five leading international policies has helped to identify the niche of each policy in relation to the design of dam projects where leading actors share common ground, and where they advocate differing approaches. Key to creating good projects is bringing together the perspectives of commercial contracting and public policy-making. The Lom Pangar project in Cameroon is a good example of this interaction, the project preparation process has been aimed at designing a project which is both economically viable and environmentally and socially sustainable’.

“This report helps us evaluate and understand good practice and recognise the role of dams as investments in national economies. We will use this knowledge as we further update our strategy on dams this year”, said Ousmane Diallo, IUCN Regional Water Coordinator for West and Central Africa.

EU emissions trading scheme may remain suspended as governments struggle to beef up security

The chimneys of Belchatow Power Station, Europe’s largest biggest coal-fired power plant. European carbon trading was due to restart on Wednesday but may be delayed further after a £28m fraud Photograph: Peter Andrews/REUTERS

Hopes that a key tool in the fight against climate change can be brought back into full operation on Wednesday were fading as national governments struggled to beef up security after a huge carbon fraud was uncovered in Europe’s pioneering emissions trading scheme (ETS).

But the British government said it was confident the UK side of the market was highly secure and there was little risk of local users being vulnerable.

The European commission stepped in to ban “spot” trading in carbon on any local exchanges last Wednesday after a £28m cyber attack on the Czech, Austrian and other national markets and was hoping to lift the restriction this week but there are growing fears that new security will not be in place on time in all locations.

Market experts are now calling for victims of carbon trading fraud to be compensated by the European Union to prevent the latest in a series of scandals turning traders off the ETS, which was meant to provide a blueprint for national carbon reduction schemes to be introduced in America and further afield.

More than half of the 27 countries around Europe engaged in the “cap and trade” ETS scheme, under which polluting companies are forced to buy carbon certificates if they do not keep their CO2 output below their agreed quota, were said by the EU to have inadequate security systems in place.

Carbon market experts expressed doubt that everything could be sorted out by Wednesday. “I am not banking on any of this being sorted in a hurry,” said one. “The EU’s record on IT issues is not good. It took them a year and a half longer than they said to link the CITL (Community Independent Transaction Log) with the UN’s ITL (International Transaction Log) and even then they refused to take any responsibility for the delay,” he added.

There have already been predictions that the level of losses to those traders or small industrial companies unable to use the full market would be £60m even if the market did open for full business again on Wednesday. The EC itself admitted that the Wednesday deadline could not be guaranteed.

There has been widespread condemnation of the slow speed with which the EU has acted after a series of fraud attacks on the ETS market in the past few years.

Connie Hildegaard, the EC climate commissioner, claimed that the scheme was a victim of its own success. “Over the last years, the market has reached a size which makes it a potential target of fraudulent practices.

“Therefore, as the market matures and grows further, it is critical that it continues to be subject to appropriate and effective regulatory oversight.”

The Department of Energy and Climate Change said at the weekend that it supported the moves to tighten systems around Europe. “The security of the carbon market is very important and this period of time will allow registry administrators to address the security of their registry. The UK Registry Administrator, the Environment Agency, has assessed the risk to UK account holders and concluded that because of the security systems used in the UK Registry successful attacks are unlikely.

But the EC has further enraged sections of the carbon market by botching an announcement late last week on new “offset” procedures whereby companies in the developing world can claim carbon credits for building “green” industrial schemes designed to take carbon out of the atmosphere.

One senior banker said Brussels “career” civil servants running the EU emissions trading scheme should hand over control to a new independent financial body. On Friday, their latest gaffe was to botch a key announcement, causing the price of carbon to gyrate. “These foibles used to be faintly amusing, but now they’re becoming threatening,” he said.

Meanwhile Andrew Hedge, a partner from Norton Rose law firm, said that more companies involved in carbon trading are calling for an EU backed insurance fund to be set up to cover any such losses. He warned that no system could ever be 100% fraud proof, despite promises by the commission to tighten software security in the light of the growing problem with fraud.

“The Commission is now pushing for stronger security and has taken welcome action to insist national registries are secure. But you can never have 100% security – there will always potentially be a corrupt individual or a more sophisticated cyber attack. It’s incumbent on the EC and member states to protect participants in the market. Many players would like some sort of insurance mechanism set up so that if they unwittingly buy stolen allowances, there is a mechanism by which they can return these to the authorities in exchange for replacement allowances.”

The senior banker, talking to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, also called on the European commission to issue a directive ruling that stolen allowances, once they are traded in the market, are not declared void if uncovered. “Unpicking transactions of stolen allowances which involves many people becomes very difficult. You can’t have an effective market if everyone is looking over their shoulders all the time.” Any innocent originator of the stolen allowance should instead be compensated for the loss, he said.

To forge a new direction, nation must avoid the petrol-power trap

The Arara pole, part of the Urucu oilfield, emerges from the Amazon rainforest, 650km south-east of Manaus, Brazil. Photograph: Antonio Scorza/AFP

Outside Dr Gilberto Cãmara’s office, there is a beautiful satellite map ofBrazil. From the fractal elegance of the Amazon and its tributaries to the twinkling mega-cities of Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, the map shows why he thinks Brazil can be the world’s first environmental superpower.

He leads Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), one of the top 50 research organisations in the world. His startling claim, he explains in his easy English, rests on turning a piece of standard economic theory on its head. Nations develop their economies by moving up the value chain, away from churning out commodities and towards manufacturing, say the textbooks. Brazil has abundant natural resources, so the key to prosperity is to start making stuff, right? Wrong, he says, because of the “China effect”.

China mass manufactures at rock-bottom prices, with the consequence that over the past two decades the cost of manufactured goods has fallen fast, while demand has pushed up the cost of the commodities used to make the goods. This leads Camara to his slogan: “Brazil – the natural knowledge economy“. He describes this as applying knowledge and technology to commodities to boost their value, and reels off examples: biofuels, in which Brazil leads thanks to its sugar cane ethanol and growing biodiesel production; renewable energy – 47% of the country’s energy is already green, a world record; and climate change – Brazil’s Amazon is vital to the planet’s health.

“Brazil’s natural knowledge economy offers more opportunities for internal [national] research than our manufacturing industry,” he says. Brazil wouldn’t be the first nation to get rich on its resources, but it aims to be the first to do so without destroying its own economy or environment.

So that’s the pitch. What are the catches? I can think of a few: the country’s jumbo oil discoveries, continuing deforestation, fast-rising energy needs, a vast rich-poor divide and widespread local corruption, not to mention whether Brazil can find a way to get paid the premium needed to fund environmental responsibility.

Let’s take the vast oil finds off the coast of Rio – 50bn barrels – which within a few years will make Brazil a global petro-power. That, Brazil’s special ambassador for climate change, Sergio Serra, told me, presents a “big challenge”. “Our present policy is not to change the energy mix,” he said, which is dominated by hydroelectric power and biofuels. “But of course the temptation will be great, enormous.” An economy supercharged by petrol would not be environmental.

Keeping to your greenhouse gas emissions pledges would be, on the other hand. And, gushing oil or not, the environment minister, Izabella Teixeira, says Brazil will meet its 2020 targets, which are pretty tough for an emerging country. The key is stopping deforestation, particularly in the Amazon, and the latest figures suggest Brazil is making fast progress. But populist changes proposed to the Forest Code laws protecting the forest, bolstered by Brazil’s chasm between rich and poor and allegations of a rich world conspiracy to keep Brazil poor, pose a serious threat.

Nonetheless, Teixeira is clear that the economic development of the Amazon region, and the infrastructure to achieve it, will forge ahead.

Maurio Zimmermann, the energy minister, also shows green conviction: 50% of the fuel in Brazil’s cars is ethanol; the government auction to buy 2,400MW of wind power was oversubscribed by four times; carbon capture and storage experiments are under way.

Brazil is at a major fork in the road on its journey to prosperity. One path is rough, and has never been walked by any country: the route to growth without environmental and atmospheric vandalism. The other is well paved and lit, with an easy-to-follow map. It is called business as usual, though it may very well end in a sheer drop. Success is far from assured, but Brazil appears ready to take on the hard road and prove that “environmental superpower” is not an oxymoron.

British firm to design mammoth offshore wind turbines with 275m wingspan that produce three times power of standard models

The revolutionary 10MW Aerogenerator X, a new breed of mammoth offshore wind turbine in development by British firm Arup.

Illustration: Wind Power Limited and Grimshaw

British, American and Norwegian engineers are in a race to design and build the holy grail of wind turbines – giant, 10MW offshore machines twice the size and power of anything seen before – that could transform the global energy market because of their economies of scale.

Today, a revolutionary British design that mimics a spinning sycamore leaf and which was inspired by floating oil platform technology, entered the race. Leading engineering firm Arup is to work with an academic consortium backed by blue-chip companies including Rolls Royce, Shell and BP to create detailed designs for the “Aerogenerator”, a machine that rotates on its axis and would stretch nearly 275m from blade tip to tip. It is thought that the first machines will be built in 2013-14 following two years of testing.

But the all-British team of designers and engineers, which includes Eden project architects Grimshaw, is in stiff competition with other groups. Earlier this year US wind company Clipper, which has close ties with the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory,announced plans to build 10MW “Britannia” turbines in north-east England.

Based on a scaled-up version of the conventional wind turbines now common in the British landscape, these giants would be fixed to the sea bed but would stand nearly 600ft high above the waves. If they prove technically and financially feasible, each turbine should be able to generate enough electricity to provide 5,000-10,000 homes and, says Clipper, should create energy equivalent to 2m barrels of oil in their 25-year lifetime.

Meanwhile, Norwegian firm Sway is planning to build massive floating turbines that would stick straight out of the sea from 100m-deep floating “masts” anchored to the sea bed. An EU-sponsored research project is also investigating 8–10MW turbines, and other American and Danish companies are planning 9MW machines. Full-scale prototyes of all three leading designs are expected to be complete within three years.

“There is a wonderful race on. It’s very tight and the prize is domination of the global offshore wind energy market,” said Feargal Brennan, head of offshore engineering at Cranfield University, where much of the Aerogenerator development work has been carried out.

“The UK has come late to the race, but with 40 years of oil and gas experience we have the chance to lead the world. The new [Aero-generator] turbine is based on semi-submersible oil platform technology and does not have the same weight constraints as a normal wind turbine. The radical new design is half the height of an equivalent [conventional] turbine,” he said. He added that the design could be expanded to produce turbines that generated 20MW or more.

The largest wind turbines currently installed are mostly rated at around 3MW. By comparison, coal power stations typically have a capacity in gigawatts, or thousands of megawatts – it would take 180 of the new giant turbines to generate the equivalent capacity of a coal power station proposed this year for North Ayshire, Scotland.

Engineers say that scale is the key to wind power. Doubling the diameter of a conventional wind turbine theoretically produces four times as much power, but weighs eight times as much and can increase costs by a factor of eight. Offshore power is widely regarded as the future of renewable energy because the wind is much more reliable at sea, larger machines are possible to transport and install and there is far less public opposition.

On land, massive cranes and blades have to be driven to remote hilltops, and planning permission can take many years. However, the present generation of offshore turbines are 30-50% more expensive than their terrestrial counterparts, are harder to maintain and are more prone to corrosion.

The market for offshore power is expected to grow to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Last year the European Wind Energy Association predicted that Europe would increase its offshore wind power from less than 2GW today to more than 150GW by 2030.

Britain, which has little upland space available for large wind farms,overtook Denmark in offshore wind generation in 2008 and now leads the world with 330 offshore turbines installed. It also has the world’s most ambitious plans to develop the wind resource, being committed to installing 12GW of offshore power by 2012. This is the equivalent of 2,500 of the largest 5MW machines presently developed.

John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK, said: “It is critical that the UK government does not hinder the development of offshore wind power by cutting budgets for short-term gain. All our energy needs depend on this.”

Pilot André Borschberg leaves Swiss airfield in attempt to fly day and night without fuel

An experimental solar-powered plane whose makers hope to one day circle the globe using only energy collected from the sun took off for its first 24-hour test flight today.

The plane, with its 80-metre (263ft) wingspan, left Payerne, in Switzerland, shortly before 7am after overcoming an equipment problem that delayed a previous attempt, the Solar Impulse team said.

Clear blue skies mean the prototype aircraft will be able to soak up plenty of solar energy as it flies over the Jura mountains to the west of the Swiss Alps.

By mid-morning the pilot, André Borschberg, was cruising at 3,000 metres, trying to avoid low-level turbulence and thermal winds, which are frequent in the mountains.

He will take the plane to an altitude of 8,500 metres by this evening, when a decision will be made on whether to continue through the night using solar power stored in its batteries.

“The goal of the project is to have a solar-powered plane flying day and night without fuel,” said the team co-founder Bertrand Piccard. He added that this test flight – the third major step after a first “flea hop” and an extended flight earlier this year – would demonstrate whether the ultimate plan was feasible: to fly the plane around the world.

“This flight is crucial for the credibility of the project,” said Piccard, a record-breaking balloonist whose father and grandfather accomplished pioneering feats in the air and under water.

The team had hoped to make the 24-hour test flight last week, when days in the northern hemisphere were even longer, allowing the plane’s 12,000 solar cells to collect more energy before attempting to coast through the night.

But a problem with a key piece of communications equipment forced them to keep the plane on the ground while modifications were made. Every aspect of the aircraft is monitored by engineers, and much of the resulting data fed on to the team’s website and Twitter page.

Borscherg, the plane’s sole pilot, will decide by 8pm whether to continue through the night. If he goes ahead, the plane will slowly descend to 1,500 metres before midnight, and Borschberg will stay at that altitude until attempting a landing at dawn.

Piccard, who achieved the first nonstop circumnavigation of the globe in a balloon, the Breitling Orbiter III, in 1999, said that if he was successful the next step would be an Atlantic crossing. That flight would be done in a second, lighter prototype, and would involve new challenges and dangers.

Although the goal is to show that emissions-free air travel is possible, the team has said it does not see solar technology replacing conventional jet propulsion in the near future. Instead, the project is designed to test and promote new energy-efficient technologies.

River currents could be harnessed at four bridges across the capital